Soconfusedhelp

Hi Everyone........
Not sure where to start. Sorry for the length of this in advance. My husband and I have been married almost 2 years, together a little over 7 years. My mother is a hard core alcoholic and even though my dad and her divorced when I was 2, I still have a number of horrific memories. My younger sister was raised by my AM and I was visiting for the weekend every other weekend. My mother is on her 3rd marriage and has been in recovery for the last 10 years.... or at least I thought so until I saw some FB pics. UGH.... My contact is very limited with her, I was lucky I had many wonderful people to take her place. The term`Adult Child of an Alcoholic`was just introduced to me recentky and I understand that there could be some issues I need to sort out with myself. I am planning to go to Al Anon because of that.
Also because my Grandfather (on my dad`s side), whom I loved dearly, died of delirium tremens symptoms when I was 16. He was trying to give up alcohol for a year at that point and gone to the hospital to `boost his immune system". Shortly after being admitted, he became very confused and hallucinated, trembled. The doctors put a lot of sedatives into his system. He died while he was tied to the bed, alone, at night. They tied him down so he would not tear his IVs out. They said it was heart and kidney failure. He was gone in 2 days.
So that is my short background with alcohol.
I grew up not drinking anything, ever. I had someone in my life from about age 3 to 15, that I would end up just like my mother, in the ditch, drunk. I never touched alcohol until I was maybe 19. I am 32 now, and to this day I never got drunk. Tipsy or slightly buzzed on occasion maybe, but never drunk. I like some Baileys every now and then in the hottub. Over the years I learnt to appreciate different wines and how they can be enjoyed. Red wine is great with some Camembert cheese as dessert. White wine pairs really nicely with shrimp. Heck I can take a shot of alcohol and enjoy it - I am not from NA and there is this special shot that my home country is famous for.... so when I bring it back from trips as a present, sometimes I have some and enjoy the conversation about it..... But it takes me half a glass of wine or one Bailey’s to get “buzzed” so it’s not like I am doing it to excess or wrecking my budget. Alcohol is not something that I place a lot of value on. If it’s not in front of me, I don’t think about it. I am not emotionally attached to it. If I am having a long day at work, I am looking forward to the end of the day, period, not the end of the day with a glass of wine or some beers. I would still rather choose a slice of cake that red wine and cheese as my dessert.

I am only writing this to show that I am not an “unfun” person. I can go out and enjoy a drink or two but that is my limit. Even if I wanted to drink more, I couldn’t. After the initial buzz, I get sleepy, I need to have a coffee or switch to water. Or I get this feeling that I really do not want any more and if I don’t desire something, I don’t eat/drink it.

As I said, I am only writing this to show that I am not an “unfun” person that cannot go out and have some fun in a social setting.
My husband. I love him dearly and he is my everything. I am at my wits' end and I don't know what my next step should be.
Him and I have never been able to have an honest conversation about alcohol because he does not value my opinion and says that I am biased because of my background with alcohol and childhood memories. But neverthless, here is the short story, things that I see and what happened 2 weeks ago.
I will try to keep this short and add more details as I receive replies.
My husband was pretty wild when he was young. I only know these from stories because him and his friends told me about them. I believe alcohol was a part of his life every day for a lot of years. Weekends were 3 day parties. This is the norm around here. A lot of people drink a lot. It’s socially accepted. Last time my husband got so drunk he couldn’t walk and almost fell off the stairs…. The next day I trued having a talk with him about it. I tried telling him how much it hurts me to see him like that. He did not understand what my issue was. I said it was painful for me to see he had so much to drink he couldn’t walk. His response was he does not see anything wrong with that. He was just having a bit of fun and he did not hurt anyone so what is the harm.
You see, he is an amazing person. There are so many things that I love about him and the thought of losing him pains me more that I can tell. I am crying as I am typing this.
He has done well in school, he has a great job. He has always had great jobs. He has done things in his career that not a lot of people can say they’ve done. He is smart.
He is very athletic, runs, swims. He is active almost every day. He could beat me in anything that we do. He is in a much better physical shape than me.
He is a great provider, he is loving and caring most of the time.
But still, he drinks a lot. He does not drink every day or I don’t think he does.
We can go out and have a drink or two and he is OK and we drive home. On such occasions he never has more that 2 drinks.
He has no issues with being a DD. He has given up alcohol or just beer for Lent before. There are days when he does not drink any.
He has issues with Binge drinking. It happens more than I like. He could go 3-4 months not having an episode or he could have one every month or two on two weeks.
The problem is when he passes a point he doesn’t care. Then he has no off switch.
Or we could be at home watching TV and he has some beers and some wine with dinner and some more beers and the some Vodka with who knows what. It’s a normal Saturday.
And I would always get upset because all I keep thinking is that I am not good enough for him because if I was he would stay with me instead of drifting off to la la land….
Whenever he goes on a guy’s trip, they get hammered. He’d come home from a weekend trip and smell of alcohol and throw up in the shower from being so rough on his body.
He loves alcohol. He loves beer. He talks about it a lot. When he pictures something, it’s always with a cold beer. Barbequing, gettogethers, having a talk by the campfire. Beer has to be involved.
He is 35 now and in some ways I feel he is grown up and some ways he is stuck in high school. But who am I to talk when I have never tied a good one, right? Going out with friends to drink to get drunk is OK. Drinking till stupor is OK.
This is the man who supported me through the difficult death of a beloved only to go away on a guy’s trip the weekend after the funeral and call me at 3 am in the morning, slurring his speech, fallen on the ground, I-don’t-know-where-I-am drunk. He was telling me he doesn’t know where he was, he was alone, he was on the ground ad he wished he could cuddle up with me in bed. This was after we just had a talk about how afraid I am to lose him and how I want him not to get drunk on this trip.
He always says that he is not an alcoholic because he goes to work regularly and his family and work comes first. Where in this story, do you see me, the wife coming first?
I think alcohol comes first. He does not consider my feelings. My feelings do not matter to him. That is how I feel.

He really wants to be a dad. We were planning for a child. We were TTC and I talked to him about drinking again. We ran into some difficulties and I had to have major surgery for fixing something inside me. 3 days before my surgery he had a get together after work. The get together started at 4 pm, talked to him at 7.15 pm, he sounded a bit tipsy but nothing bad. I got home at 8.15 to him being very drunk, I just saw him fall and hit his head. He was very drunk and after I put him to bed I thought I will not be able to do this again and thought of leaving him there. Then I noticed the bump on his head and he was drunk in a weird way. Staring at me but his eyes were empty. I have seen this before but this time there was a strangeness about it, he was just staring at me non responsive. I think I saw signs of classic alcohol poisoning. Something just felt different this time. I called the ambulance, they took him in right away. He was drifting in and out of consciousness. After I called the ambulance and was waiting for them to arrive he had a seizure of some sort. I thought he was going to die in front of me. He was puking in his mouth so I pulled him into a side position.
I was sitting in ER hoping to see my husband again alive, healthy. BAC came back and hour later, 0.81. At the time I did not understand what that meant. I asked the doctor if that was high. She said .17 is legally intoxicated, .86 is likely 100% death. They did a bunch of things to him, IV, catheter, wanted to do a head CT but he was fighting them so they sedated him to sleep. He was transferred to the ICU dept for overnight observation at 2 am in the morning. When I went in at 9 am in the morning,, his morning blood test just came back at 0.46. The ICU doctor said to us that 0.89 would be very likely permanent brain damage. He also said my husband is a healthy 35 year old and we should not get too hung up on the numbers but he said it was the best decision I called the ambulance as he would be very worried about anyone in his care in the the 80s zone transpiring. He also explained what alcohol tolerance means. How it was possible that my husband got to have that much alcohol in his system. So much that it could actually kill 2 people.
My problem is, my husband does not want to talk about it. I am trying to give him some time. He has given up alcohol for the period of Lent and he said he will need to think hard what he needs to do. I only know this from his brother - he did not tell me any of this.
We talked about this 2ce. He said it was a mistake. He did not plan to drink that much. He thinks the gauges were wrong, he says he only had 7 or 8 beers in the pub and then some shots of rum and whiskey at a friend’s house. That there is no way his BAC could be .81. That he might be allergic to something in the shots. I said you want a child, 7 beers is already not OK let alone the shots. I guess he was nervous about my surgery? Way to deal with things.

He said he does not wan to talk to his family doctor about this.

I want him to talk to his doctor about this. I want him to acknowledge that he has a condition where he can literally drink himself to death and not notice. Based on descriptions from the night he was OK one moment and the next he was suddenly incomprehensible and unable to stand. The doctor said it’s because of the tolerance. His body is so used to alcohol that it does not detect alcohol until his cells just start drowning in it. It’s like a person with no feelings of pain. You can cut that person’s hand off and they will bleed to death and not notice. I also want his friends to know about this. The next guy’s trip comes around, I am not taking responsibility for this on my own. I said to him if you do this again, I will call 911 on you again because I would rather have you angry at me (which he was) or divorce me than die on me when I know there are things I can do to prevent that. He never replied to that……
If a friend of yours had a condition like this, would you want to know about it? If this knowledge could save your friend’s life, would you want to know this? Would you want to know if your friend could die any moment and still appear normal? At .81, he walked to the ambulance, with support, but he walked!!!!
Anything on the Internet, cannot find anything over .5 discussed.... as it is lethal to 50% of the population.

He is already diminishing the whole happening. He is organizing the guys’ trip. Agreed to a get together in April, but “make it on a Friday or Saturday so everyone can have a bit of fun”.
Help………. What is the next step? SMART? AA? Total abstinence? What do I say to him when he is ready to talk about this? How much time to I give him before I bring it up? I am hoping it was his rock bottom. I am a mess. I am at loss. I cry all the time about this. Thanks for everyone’s input. I will be back tomorrow.
Soconfusedhelp

Soconfusedhelp

So sorry for this being so long. I am truly at a very very low point in life. Appreciate all the responses.
Soconfusedhelp

SparkleKitty

Please don't apologize. So many people come here in distress. So many stay here in order to help and receive others in distress.

The most important lesson I have learned on this forum are the three C's:

I didn't Cause it
I can't Control it
I can't Cure it

It sounds like your husband has a problem with alcohol and is not only in denial about it, he needs YOU to be in denial about it too. That is the addiction, protecting itself.

I hear in your last few paragraphs how desperately you want to fix this for me which makes it very painful for me to have to say that you cannot. Please read every single thing you can stand to read on this site, especially the "sticky" threads at the top of the forum. You are not alone in this situation -- so many people have gone through this before you. Many of them have shared their experience, their strength, and their hope here on this forum for those that come later.

I am so glad you found us, but so terribly sorry for the reason you came looking.

stella27

Your husband sounds a lot like the way mine used to be. I was never able to make him love himself the way I loved him and he got steadily worse in his drinking to the point that it played a significant part in the destruction of our family.

The hearts of my 3 children have been broken and we are still trying to re-build after the devastation of alcoholism and the sick family system that goes along with it.

The hardest thing for me was living with an active alcoholic who seemed hell-bent on destroying himself and anyone who loved him enough to stay with him. My speaking to him about his drinking only started fights and distracted me from what I had to do - which was raising children in a safe home.

I don't have any advice, but I want you to know that unless he commits to recovery, the disease is progressive.

Recovering2

I'm sorry you're in such a tough spot, but glad you found SR. Your husband is an Alcoholic, but denial is one of their trade marks. They will make excuses, minimize their behavior, blame others, etc. Anything to avoid the truth. It's what they do. And there is nothing, nothing, nothing you can do to change that. That's the part that's so hard for those of us who love an A. We have no control over what they choose to do. You keep saying "I want him to....". But it's not about what you want him to do. The only thing you can do is change your own behaviors. You can learn what is acceptable to you. Keep in mind that alcoholism is a progressive disease. It WILL get worse if left untreated.
He has the right to make his own decisions about drinking. You have the right to decide what you want in your life. Going to his guy friends to make them aware will back fire, I can promise you that. That's you trying to control the situation. I tried that with my BF's friends, I became the bad guy! You said if they know, then you don't have to take responsiblity on your own. You don't have to take responsiblity....period!!! It's not your responsiblity...it's his.
Please find AlAnon and go to a meeting, it will be the start of a healthier journey for you. Read "Codependent No More" by Melody Beattie. Take care of you.

Tuffgirl

Welcome, so confused. I am sorry for what brings you here, but hope you use this site as a place for support, resources, and maybe some hope for a better future.

I am blown away at a .81 BAL. I've never heard of anything over a .5. I, like you, have a two, maybe three drink limit before I am intoxicated. Doesn't matter what I drink - I get to a point and my body shuts off the rest, usually through a feeling of nausea. But I watched my ex drink a half a fifth of Jack Daniels in an evening. My best friend who died from liver failure could drink a fifth of vodka in one day. SO I know massive amounts are not unheard of. I've thought of this kind of drinking as missing that switch in the brain that shuts off when someone has had enough. My friend didn't have that switch. Neither did my Ex.

Your husband is in denial. And like the others here have already said, there isn't much you can do to change that. It's his denial, not yours.

Sure, lots of good recovery programs out there, but it needs to be his decision. You can try to "raise the bottom" by making threats to control his behavior or extract promises he won't likely keep. But really, in the end, you'll end up crazy in your own way and having not accomplished much.

If you have made it known that you have a problem with his drinking, then that is all you can do, short of ending the marriage and running for the hills. Doesn't sound like you are ready for that, so I'd suggest Al-Anon meetings, maybe those specifically geared toward children of alcoholics. Start working on yourself. Learn new skills to handle this situation better (so you aren't sitting over a keyboard typing your story to a bunch of strangers while you cry your heart out). Learn to live a life that is meaningful to you, regardless of what he is or isn't doing.

Read as much as you can about alcoholism. Knowledge is empowering! Talk to other recovering alcoholics...you can find them in open AA meetings. Be open-minded to what others who have walked this path will tell you, even if its painful to hear and leaves you feeling defeated.

And finally, try to take it one day at a time. Just focus on today. What you have control over (you and your emotions) and what you don't (him and anything/anyone else).

Keep coming back!
~T

CeciliaV

So sorry to hear your story and your pain. You're not alone. With my husband, there have been at least 3 really bad binges in the last couple years. After one of his last ones, we did go to the ER the next day - it was our second such trip. Even though it had been several hours since his last drink, the blood tests still showed that he had a BAC over 300 (.3%)...which means he was likely close to 500 (.5%) or even higher at his peak. Scary. Still, even after two ER trips and two different IOPs (intensive outpatient programs), he continued to drink. He knew he had a problem. He just thought that admitting it and doing something because he felt he should do something was enough. He had at least one more very bad drinking binge, where I came home to find him mostly nonresponsive at home on the night we were supposed to close on our mortgage refinance. Needless to say, I had to cancel the appointment! I spent the evening monitoring him to make sure he was safe - checking his breaths per minute, checking his pulse, ensuring that he was lying in a safe position, etc. Not my finest moments.

Until he was ready, he wasn't at a point to do more than go through the motions. I'm not sure how he became ready. I'm not sure what clicked in him and made him seek sobriety and recovery. I am curious and want to understand, but I honestly don't care. I'm glad he did reach out for help. I'm not trying to be a downer here, but the sad fact is that it's up to them to get help and that not everyone does seek recovery. Regardless of what the A's in our lives do, we can't control them and we need to focus on what we can control - ourselves and our actions and our boundaries.

You will need to ask yourself some tough questions. What are you willing to live with? What are your boundaries? What do you want in life? If he doesn't seek recovery, what are you going to do for you?

As for what to do if/when he's ready to admit he has a problem and is ready to talk to you? I can only speak from my own experience. I was supportive when he admitted he was an alcoholic; I encouraged him to reach out for help. I was supportive when he went to his first and then his second IOP. When he came to me a few weeks ago and said he needed to go to an inpatient rehab, I was as supportive as I could be and mustered all the strength I could. (Now my situation, in hindsight is a little funny - he woke me up at 5am to tell me this, so my initial response was half-asleep shock, followed by me mumbling that I was really happy that he came to this decision on his own but that I just woke up & only had maybe 2-3 hours sleep and couldn't really process much more than saying that...and I think I repeated that a few times until I finally peeled myself out of bed and got some coffee in me!) Since he was finally willing to be a patient, I put my patient-advocate hat on and helped coordinate his care & his medical leave from work. I encouraged him to seek his recovery and to work through it. My husband is still in rehab and is coming home in two days.

Every A is different and every significant other of an A is different. But what is constant is that we all need to work on our own recovery in our own ways. Even if your husband doesn't seek recovery, I encourage you to seek out your own recovery. Set your boundaries and stick to them (oy, I had a hard time with that one). Seek support for yourself - here on SR, Al Anon, Smart Recovery. Both Al Anon & Smart Recovery offer online sessions for family members, so you can "lurk" online if you want to check them out & see what's a good fit for you. Above all else, just know that you are strong, you are deserving of happiness, and you need to take care of & focus on you. Change what is in within your power & what you need to change for you.

Sending you strength & hope & hugs.

lqypb

im praying for you, please pray for me

Anna

I hope that you take care of yourself and find support and make boundaries in your life.

LexieCat

.89 is a little hard to believe. It certainly isn't normal to survive something like that.

Everyone here is giving you good advice. Do NOT consider having children with him--not unless you want to be raising the child alone.

There is little you can do. You might go ahead and talk to his doctor about what happened. It might make him angry, but sometimes a doctor can get through where we are helpless. At least he would be getting an objective opinion.

Beyond that, you need to take care of yourself. I hope you will go to Al-Anon. My second husband nearly suffered the fate that your grandfather did, and Al-Anon was an absolute lifeline through that scary time.

Justfor1

Would that mean that he had only 10% blood in him and the rest of him just booze? It shows that he has an incredible tolerance to alcohol. I heard of a women who received a DUI with a .50 BAC. It shows that the human body can endure a lot. Hopefully, it will be his "bottom" but if it's not this incident could still be your bottom.

LexieCat

It's .89 percent, not 89 percent. Less than one percent alcohol. Still a normally fatal dose is around .5 percent.

LifeRecovery

SoConfused.

It was really hard to read your post. This was my ex-husband and I was you.

Even though he only drank on occasion, I was walking on eggshells 24/7 just knowing that the drinking could go awry at any minute.

I just wanted to normalize that what you are feeling is normal in a crazy situation.

Unfortunately love cannot fix drinking problems in another, but I did get a lot of help for myself.

Hugs to you.